The Poem I Wrote to My Daughter on Her First Day of School
She couldn't read it. I wrote it anyway.
My daughter started school today, and I wrote her a poem. She is five. She cannot read. The poem is not for now; it is for the daughter she will be, the one who will be able to read it and know what it was like to be her father on the first day of school.
I wrote about the way she held my hand on the way to the gate, the way she looked back at me before she went in, the way she smiled the way she smiles when she is trying to be brave. I wrote about the way the school looked, the way the gate looked, the way the world looked from the outside.
I wrote about the way I felt, the way a father feels when his daughter starts school, the way the heart is full and the eyes are wet and the hand is empty because the hand that was holding hers is now holding nothing.
I put the poem in her lunchbox, the way I put a note in her lunchbox every day. The poem is not for her ears; it is for her memory, the one she is building even now, the one that will hold the sound of her father writing to her before she could hold the meaning.
She will read it when she is ready. I will be here when she does. The poem is the bridge between now and then, and the bridge is the point.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
Similar Stories
Keep reading in the Writory Library
Enter a Writory poetry contest